How Many Carbs You Should Eat with JJVirgin

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I give you the latest cutting edge intel to help you look, feel and think better. All right, today's show is all about carbs. Carbs, carbs, Carbs. Yep. I get asked all the time, how many carbs should I eat? How much sugar can I have? Well, in today's show, you're going to learn why sugar is carbs and which carb isn't a carb and how many carbs you should eat and how to go through the whole process. And you're going to learn it all from me.

Yep.

Today's guest is me. I wrote the book called the Sugar Impact Diet. That book actually is the book on how to figure out, let's go figure how many carbs you should eat. So I'm gonna walk you through that process today. All right, so here we are on the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show answering the question. I get asked, gosh, pretty much every day, how many carbohydrates should I eat? And it's a super confusing question because the answer is ready? Wait for it. It depends. It depends on your genetics. It depends on your metabolism. It depends on your exercise level. It depends on your insulin health and your adrenal health. So let's go through all of that so that you can go through your own personal discovery process to figure out what's going on to work right for you. And just a heads up on that, I'm going to pull a lot of this from the Sugar Impact diet book, which is down there. If you are able to watch this, I'm also recording it live on Facebook Live. You'll see that I've got my Sugar Impact diet, miracle mindset diet, Virgin diet books behind me. This is a lot of this information is in the virgin diet or, I'm sorry, the Sugar Impact diet. And that was what I kept getting asked was about sugar and carbs. And the reason I bring that up is because all carbohydrates except for fiber turn to sugar. All right, so all carbohydrates are going to be made into sugar. It's just a matter of whether you're making them fast or making them slow. You, you eat some cabbage, some brussels sprouts, some deep green leafies like kale. It's a very slow process. You eat some white potato, some white bread, bam, it's fast. So you want to go slow, not mainline. So that's the first thing that I want to clarify is when we're talking about carbohydrates, really we're talking about sugar, because all carbohydrates are going to turn to sugar. It's just a matter of how slowly that happens. The only thing that doesn't is fiber. And that's why we want to eat foods that are as whole as possible, as least processed as possible. Because generally the more you process something, the more the fiber goes down. And fiber really slows down the blood sugar response. Fiber feeds the good bacteria in the gut so they can flourish, which is super critical for weight loss. Fiber slows down stomach emptying so you feel fuller, longer. It can detoxify the bad estrogens and detoxify in general and help you eliminate, well, increase your transit time. So fiber is an important thing. So when I wrote the Sugar Impact diet, I wrote it because I saw that people were super confused about carbs and sugar. And big reason we're confused is because of something called the glycemic index. And the glycemic index looks at how Many takes a 50 gram dose of a food, and only that foods that food in isolation. Right. And it measures your blood sugar response to it. Now, we don't eat that way, number one. And number two, you know, a 50 gram dose of carrots would probably be a crazy amount for anyone to eat, but a 50 gram dose of a potato is pretty realistic. So that's the other piece. But the real problem with the glycemic index is it makes fructose look like it's a great sugar. Fructose doesn't raise blood sugar, so it looks low on the glycemic index, but that's because it goes straight to the liver, where basically it's going to start turning into fat. There's a little bit of storage in the liver for it to be stored as glycogen, converted to glucose, stored as glycogen. But assume that's full and it's making fat. So that's one of the first things that you want to look at, is know that your carbohydrates, except for fiber, are turning into sugar and you Want that to happen as slowly as possible. Okay, so that's the first thing. The next thing I want you to think of is when we talk about how many carbohydrates you eat, I want you to think of the impact that these have on you. And so here's the things that you would consider. How easy is it for me to lose weight around my waist? Do I carry extra weight around my waist? If you're carrying weight around your waist, you're most likely more of a sugar burner than a fat burner. Now, if you have to eat every couple of hours, every two to three hours, if you cannot go longer in between your meals, that's another sign that you are a sugar burner, not a fat burner. We don't want to be sugar burners. We want our body to preferentially be able to burn off stored fat for fuel. Now, during high intensity interval training, that type of those types of workouts, you are going to be using your sugar, your muscle stores of glycogen, your sugar for fuel. But ideally, the rest of the time you're using your stored body fat for fuel and you're able to go hours in between meals, you're not hungry again, and that's super important. So things that we look at here to see how you're feeling and how your body handles carbohydrates are, how's your energy throughout the day and, and how long are you able to go between meals? That's important. You also have to know what's your stress level like. If someone has been chronically stressed, you will need a little bit more carbohydrate intake, especially in the evening. Also, low carbohydrate intake in the evening can help you with sleep, can help you with testosterone development. So little bits, that's where I like to put it. But if you've got someone who's got adrenal exhaustion, adrenal fatigue, you've been under chronic stress, as you're healing your adrenals, you tend to need a little bit higher carbohydrate diet. If you go really low, it tends to just tax your adrenals further. Conversely, if you're insulin resistant, pre diabetic, diabetic, you tend to go be better with low carbohydrates, sometimes even into ketosis. Although generally I use ketosis diets for people with seizures, people with brain injuries, people with cancer. That's where I would look more there. But that's the range. But here's the thing I'm going to tell you even within that range. I never advocate a high carbohydrate diet. It's always somewhere in the range of if you're in ketosis, it's about 5% of your calories. But I generally am advocating a range anywhere from 20 to 40% of your calories. And it's just going to depend on how your insulin receptors are doing, how your adrenal health is, and then working from there. And then also, of course, how physically active you are. If you are an athlete who trains a lot harder, you can get away with more. It's like you earned them. Doesn't mean it's the best thing you should be doing, mind you, but you'll be able to pull off more because you're insulin sensitive. Your body can really hear insulin, so that you are going to be able to handle those carbohydrates better than someone who is insulin resistant. And it will keep their blood sugar up. So that's the first part. Now here's how you figure this out. You ready? This is what's super cool, because I love the idea of you becoming your own personal health detective. You know, there's some basic truths that we all, we all have, like, we're all going to be better with more fiber in our diet. We do better with more plants, more vegetables, more clean, deep green leafies. We do better with water. But things then vary after that. There's biochemical individuality. That is what the real basis behind personal nutrition is. And so how you figure out how many carbs are for you, because again, it can depend on your stress levels, your insulin levels, how healthy your adrenals are, what type of exercise you do, your genetics. Right, all of these things play into factor in here. So the first thing that you do is you start tapering down your carbohydrate sugar intake. And the reason I say taper is if you're right now eating a higher carbohydrate diet, say 60% of of your diet or 70%. And what I got to tell you is a lot of people don't think they are, but when you really do a diet analysis, you go, wow, you're getting a lot more in there than you realized. You know, the fruit sweetened gunk on the bottom of your yogurt of that skinny latte, all that stuff adds up. So first thing that we do is we identify where are the higher sugar impact foods coming into your diet and we start transferring. We switch out, say, a white potato for a sweet potato or whole wheat pasta and wheat pasta for rice, pasta. So we just start tapering down, we start bringing down your sugar impact generally by getting less processed foods without gluten in get trading moreover for vegetables and higher fiber. So that's step one. It's not to go cold turkey. It's not if you've been eating 60% calories from carbs that you're going to go down to 20% in a week. Because if you've been doing that, most likely you've trained your body to be a sugar burner, not a fat burner. And if you try to cut that overnight, you'll crash. So the first thing that you do is you taper down and you do that by again swapping out higher sugar impact foods. And the way I identified foods that were higher sugar impact is they either had a big insulin or glucose response. That means high fructose foods would be problematic here too. Same with artificial sweeteners. Low fiber, no fiber, very processed, or they have artificial sweeteners and they have low nutrient value. So that's how I looked at some of those high sugar impact. Low sugar impact foods have, you know, no fructose or extremely low fructose. And they don't have any artificial sweeteners. They have a low glycemic index, they've got a lot of fiber, lot of nutrient density to offset any of the carbohydrate or sugar impact. So that's step one. Then here's the critical thing. This is where you go through a reset because what you have to do to figure out how many carbs work for you is you have to kind of clean out the whole system, right, so that you can actually tell what's going on. So for at least two weeks, you're in a lower your sugar impact. You, all those carbohydrates wouldn't swap all the way down to low sugar impact only. That would mean if you're having wheat pasta, you traded it to rice pasta. And then in for low sugar impact, you're having spaghetti squash pasta. If you were having a white potato, you swapped it for a sweet potato. And now when you're going low sugar impact, low carb, you're having butternut squash. So we're taking your carbs way down. We've got good healthy fats and clean protein and lots of non starchy vegetables. And you go through this for at least two weeks until you, and what I want to see during that time is your energy stabilized, your ability to go four to six hours between meals with no problems, you're dropping belly Fat. So you're just starting to go, okay. A lot of the symptoms that I might have had, like joint pain, brain fog, fatigue, headaches, gas and bloating, food cravings, can't lose weight. Are you going? Sounds like me. A lot of those things have gone now away and that's the critical factor. Now you go through that and I say two weeks, but you know, if it takes three weeks, it takes three weeks. And if you're one of the people who's coming into this and has poor blood sugar regulation, maybe you're insulin resistant. Some of the things that can help you during this time. Cinnamon is amazing for balancing blood sugar. Lemon's amazing for reducing the blood sugar output from a meal and also taking away your sweet tooth. Chromium, these minerals, vanadium, magnesium, zinc, all really help balance blood sugar. Vitamin D is super important for insulin sensitivity. And then I'm in love with the herb berberine for blood sugar control, sort of like nature's metformin. So you can be using these things too. Fish oil, of course, too, is super important for helping your insulin receptors get back into shape. So, and reducing inflammation. So you go through that now after you've gone through that two week low, low carb reset, where you're getting the majority of your carbs from non starchy vegetables and you're eating a little bit of things like butternut squash at night. Once you go through that, you, and you take your fruit out altogether because the more fructose you eat. And yes, we get it from fruit, we get it from fruit juice concentrate, we get it from high fructose corn syrup, we get it from table sugar, we get it from honey, we get it from a lot from agave. The more that you eat, the better you, your liver becomes transporting that straight to the or. I'm sorry, the better your body becomes transferring straight to the liver where it starts making fat. We don't want to be good at making fat. I'm assuming that you're the same as me and you do not want to be good at that. I want to suck at that.

Really.

So we do that for two weeks at least. When you start to feel that new normal, that's the way we really want you to feel. Then at that point, what you're going to do is you're going to go back and you are going to challenge how you feel. When you start to eat medium and higher sugar impact foods, you'll go, okay, when I eat this way, does my weight stay the same or did I gain weight? Because if you're starting to gain weight, your carbohydrate intolerant, you're eating more than you should be doing, and it's impacting your energy metabolism. You look at your energy levels, you look at your belly fat, you look at your cravings. Is this a trigger food for you? Last night, my fiance and I were at the grocery store, and, oh, my gosh, I was like, you know, they had that big bag of the organic popcorn with sea salt made with olive oil. I'm like, get me the heck away from those things. I would never bring that in the house because I'd eat all of it. Then I'd go out and get more. So you got to know yourself, too. But the big things you're looking for at that point, as you're starting to reintroduce carbohydrates in your diet, slowly and carefully because you're monitoring your system, your. Your symptoms to see how you feel as you go. Okay, how's my. When I have carbohydrate lunch, like, let's say that I had a rice tortilla or I had a sweet potato. How was my energy that afternoon? Did I feel good or did I start to crash or have brain fog? How about inflammation? Did I have cravings? Did I get hungry sooner? Right? Did I feel bloated at all? How about when I woke up in the morning? How was my weight? Was my weight staying the same? Or all of a sudden, did I start to gain, like, go up a couple pounds? Because remember, you can't look at your body like a bank account. It's a chemistry lab that is going to tell you exactly where you need to be in carbohydrate management. Like, my fiance eats a little bit more carbohydrates than me. If I ate that way, I'd gain weight and feel crappy and tired. I do. I don't eat carbs. In the morning, I have my shake, and I do it with an avocado, and I do it with a little bit. Today I had a did a hike, so I put some strawberries in it afterwards. But typically it's just protein. Some avocado, maybe some spinach and some coconut milk and some extra fiber. So it's fiber, fat, and protein trifecta where I put my carbs in this teeny bit at lunch sometimes and then a little bit at dinner because that helps me sleep. But again, that's what I've learned. I've tested my levels, and I know that when I eat more, I start to gain weight around my waist. I'm not good with them, I don't handle them well. But if I don't eat any then my adrenals get stressed and actually my blood sugar starts to go up. So there you have it. It's finding that perfect balance for you and again for everybody. It's different. And that's why I remind you, you always want to make sure that you are doing this for yourself. That's why we go through these personal discovery processes both on the Virgin Diet and Sugar Impact Diet, where you can see where you are and see where you need to be. Now. I'll be back in a moment and for everyone listening to the podcast after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so be sure to stay with me. Ready to lose fat fast and keep it off forever? Discover the number one resource for fast and lasting fat loss by visiting JJVirgin.com Access exclusive videos, content, rich blog posts, and lots of free resources to help you lose weight and feel better fast and be part of a community. Get ready to transform your life one simple shift at a time by visiting www.jjvirgin.com welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. In today's question, I was recording this on Facebook and while I was recording it live, Rocio asked JJ what are the best snacks for a low carb diet? So I thought that was just perfect. So let me pop up a couple of them and here's I'm going to leave you with a bigger concept to start with and that is ideally you're able to go four to six hours between meals and you don't really need to have snacks anymore. And you're really focusing on drinking ice water or ice green tea in between meals because quite often we're not hungry at all and or just thirsty. We've been trained to think we need to snack by, guess who? The snacking industry. So that's the first thing I want to leave you with. But I will tell you that I never travel without emergency food and I always keep snacks with me because you just never know when you're going to get too far away from food for a while that's decent. So two things I travel with. I travel with my all in one bars. I'm particularly addicted to my dark chocolate mocha right now. Before that I was like kind of crazed on the dark chocolate mint. I go between those two, but they're protein, fat, fiber trifecta that keeps your blood sugar balanced and can tide you over till your next meal. And the other thing is then I have a couple things at home that are easy to do. So here's some simple recommendations. Number one, celery is like the best holder for things of anything. So celery can be fantastic with a little bit of almond butter in it. And that's a simple little low carb snack. I tend to think of low carb snacks as having fat, fiber and protein. So another one that I really love to do is I will take sliced turkey or sliced grass fed roast beef and I get this stuff called Kite Hill Almond ricotta cheese. It is unbelievably amazing. Might be hard to find though. I can't find it everywhere. So you can either put that into the middle of this or you can put a little avocado into the middle of it and roll that up. And that is just a yummy little roll up thing that's so easy to do. Now in the Sugar Impact diet cookbook, I have a fabulous recipe for gazpacho soup with crab and gazpacho soup with some crab or shrimp and a little bit of avocado. There's another one that's just amazing. And then of course, having a mini shake. So one of the things we like to do when we come home from the gym, we can kind of messing around with our shakes. And when I come home from the gym, I'll have a mini shake. So I'll do that right away to get some protein and carbs back in to help me work out harder and recover faster. So I look at a snack as kind of a mini meal if I'm going to have one. And so a shake's a simple one to do too. All right. I hope that helped. And one more thing that if you would like to submit a question, what you can do is pop on over to my. To my. Wait for it, my Facebook page. That's what you're going to do. Pop on over to my Facebook page. And when you do, you will see I do a lot of Facebook lives. Or you can just do a wall post by other. Leave me a question. We look at those questions all the time and that's how we decide both what we're going to talk about, but then also the questions we're going to answer. And I also do a bunch of fun Facebook lives. Be great to. To kind of hang with you live. Okay, now this is the gratitude portion of the show and this is like super fun for all of my team. We read every review on itunes and we so appreciate it. When you leave a review, we celebrate them. So today's review is from inspired by htg Dana from usa. I've listened to all of them. Like I love everything this woman is about. Well, thank you. H T G Dana. I keep thinking that's like it's Dana there. But I keep thinking that's like Rosanna, Rosanna, Dana. I'm totally like now I have just completely let you know what how old I am. But I think probably all of you know exactly what I'm talking about on Saturday Night Live. All right, so that is it for today. Thank you so much for joining me. I want to remind you I like through rapid fire a bunch of information at you and I'm thrilled that you're tuning in and listening to the information. Now we're going to take it a step further. Figure out what in that you heard today that you are going to take action on and then do it, especially if it makes you feel a little uncomfortable or a little scared because that's when the change, the transformation really happens. All right. And that opens you up to even more possibility in your life. Alrighty. Until next time, this is JJ Virgin signing off. I look forward to our time together. Bye.

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